In my post last week (Would you pay for Twitter?) I got a comment from a reader who asked:

“Here’s my question, if you are a business and offer a lot of things for free, how do you parley that into appropriate revenue without disengaging your audience?”

That is a very good question, and one that every business (or would-be business) should be asking. I started thinking about this a couple of years ago, posting this article (How Can You Measure the Value of a Conversation?) in October ’08. Here is the heart of the message:

Make money “because of”, not with

The “because of” effect is much more powerful than the “with” effect. One of the commenters on Jason’s post, Mack Collier (The Viral Garden), hits the nail on the head with:

…companies that are NEW to social media, wanting to use metrics and measurements that they are used to when using TRADITIONAL marketing methods to ‘get their message out there’. Their thinking is ‘how do we make money from this?’, whereas companies that have been active in this space for a while, such as Dell, understand that by PARTICIPATING that they will make more money as a BYPRODUCT of their efforts. Dell has been in the game long enough to see the impact that their efforts are making, and as a result have shifted away from the ‘how do we make money with this?’ mentality.

Attempting to DIRECTLY monetize social media efforts is the quickest way to ensure they fail. But companies that aren’t familiar with this space don’t know any better. In a few years, after more companies are more familiar with these tools, I think we’ll see them looking to INdirectly monetize their efforts, while putting the focus on SM as a way to DIRECTLY connect with their customers.

One of the best lessons that I learned from the SOBCon event that I attended in May was that blogging (and Social Media in general) should be treated like a business. That business is the marketing of your products and services & establishing yourself/your business as an authority. The goal of that business is to make money because of your blog (or Social Media efforts), instead of with your blog.

Let me repeat that for you – “by PARTICIPATING [you] will make more money as a BYPRODUCT of [your] efforts”.

Money as a by-product of participation

How exactly does this work? Well, it is both easier and more difficult than it sounds. The very first thing that your business can provide for free to its customers is Value. Something above and beyond the products and services that gives your customers a reason to visit your place of business or website, or follow you on Twitter, or friend you on Facebook (this list goes on and on).

For a real-world example, using a “place of business”, look at Starbucks. The mental images of the starving artist or writer slaving away over a venti latte, or the entrepreneur using Starbucks as an office are so common as to be a cliche. But they are a cliche because Starbucks offers something that places like McDonald’s do not – a welcoming atmosphere with music and ambiance, access to coffee and snacks, and typically like-minded folks to chat with. That is the value. That is what makes people come back.

Now, this example is not representative of what you can do with Social Media, or is it? Imagine that your blog or website is the Starbucks, how do you go about inviting people to come and hang out there? Give away some cool, free stuff. I’m talking about your blog posts, or FAQs on your industry, or whatever it is that draws people to your site in the first place. Give them the answer or information about the solution to the problem that they have, then give them even more. Add value.

Then add an opportunity for your visitors to have a conversation.

If you let them speak they will come

Online communities are exploding in popularity and will continue to grow. As Clay Shirky discusses in his book Cognitive Surplus (review here Thoughts on Cognitive Surplus) people crave community and the online space has the lowest barrier to entry, ever. Letting your customers talk to you and to each other gives you a Starbucks-like place for your potential marketspace to congregate. Then, and only then, can you get involved in the conversation – providing that added value, building your credibility and authority, and finally creating a rapport that invites your community to ask to buy something from you.

Jeffrey Gitomer says “People hate to be sold, but they love to buy”

In his Little Red Book of Selling (which every blogger and business person should read by the way) Gitomer says, “If they like you, and they believe you, and they trust you, and they have confidence in you…then they may buy from you.” That is what you are doing when you build the community and marketspace. Do ask compelling and engaging questions. Don’t sell your product or service.

Ask the community what they think. Talk about profit and productivity. Remember, they are taking the time to be involved in their community, not your community, it all needs to be about them.

I trust that this has given you some ideas for your own business and how to apply this concept to create more sales as  by-product of your Social Media activities. If you still have questions and are interested in being the feature of a case study on this topic (to be published for free on this site), please send me an email and we can talk about your situation.

I am a fan of gadgets and I am simply in love with my Android phone. Now, thanks to the technology of the Digital Video Recorder in my cable box and the video camera in my phone I can share with you a moment that I captured on TV yesterday: a newscaster on location, giving a live report – caught on camera reading the report from her phone.

She must have been in a hurry to prepare this report, because her voice is clear and her delivery is tight, until she realizes that she is back on the air herself, no longer speaking over some other images. Then her delivery collapses. Here is Amy Coveno, WMUR Channel 9, caught reading from her phone during a live
report on 5 April newscast. (the audio is not very good, you’ll need to turn up your volume, but you can see her reading straight off of her phone)

I am not posting this to poke fun, on the contrary. This is an important lesson that we can all learn from. Believe me, I could not do any better (would likely do much worse) without a lot of practice of the delivery.

The tools of professional journalism, once the preserve of large news-gathering organizations, are now in the hands of the people. The techniques, on the other hand, are available to all, and we still need to learn and practice the skills of public speaking. The tools can’t do it for us.

Justin McCullough at Leader 4 Hire shares a recent experience with a newsletter and a sales push: A Failed Sales Push by Chris Brogan and How You Can Do Better.

This is a detailed look at trust, marketing, and execution on an online sales push from some of the biggest names in Social Media – the good and the bad and how you can learn and apply this to your sales and marketing efforts.

Follow every bit of this through (except the last part) and you will succeed in your next email sales push. The sections I call “What’s Happening Here” should provide the key elements for you to model in your online campaign and sales efforts.

Nearly everything here is actually a success story other than the fifth area below.
First – Chris Brogan eNewsletter

Subject line of email from Chris: “Email marketing and the folks at Blue Sky Factory”

This is a great little sales piece from Chris. It clearly identifies his role in the email, why I (we) received it and who it benefits and why. On top of that, a nice bit of positioning and display of influence by offering an exclusive ebook download and discount to use Blue Sky Factory as a benefit to loyalty with Chris. Well done. This is the right sort of email marketing and who would expect less from Chris?

McCullough goes on to analyze the components of the newsletter, the links and sales pages, and the offers that are made. Pay attention to his description of how “marketing information” is captured when he has an opportunity to download a free e-book.

The big lesson in e-mail marketing

The email marketing campaign that McCullough details is a good one, executed well, until the the final part – where Sales and Customer Service fail mightily. I urge you to read the entire post, and the comments – they are a textbook example of how to manage a situation like this. Before you go, however, consider this:

Read the whole thing here: A Failed Sales Push by Chris Brogan and How You Can Do Better.

Merrit Colaizzi posted from the Online Marketing Summit on the 24th with Live from OMS: The 10-Step Content Strategy

I’d like to take a minute and discuss what I feel are the two most important parts of the strategy:

6. Commit to your blog. In Arnie Keunn’s business, Vertical Measures, 25% of his Web traffic comes from its blog. The blog should be the hub for your marketing activities, with platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, [and] LinkedIn as the spokes. Your blog is real estate you own, and you can control 100% how your content is presented.

Control. Something that every business wants to have, over every aspect of their marketspace.

Too bad. Social Media and user-generated content is outside of your control, but you can control the content that is on your own site. You can use it to do some things that can push the conversation in a healthy direction:

• Promote the people that have nice things to say about your company, publish links to their Tweets, their websites, etc.
• Engage them in conversations about your company.
• Provide them with a forum to discuss their issues and problems – make a case study out of how they used your company to solve those issues.
• Remember that it is your job to let the conversations take place. While the website is your hub it is your job to get out of the way and let people share.

Here is another important concept, that I just discussed with my colleague Kevin Ferrasci O”Malley: (@kfom on Twitter)

7. Make content educational, not promotional. Tell stories about problems your customers have, don’t just pitch your product. Consider asking for registration/further engagement with your audience at the end of your content — once readers are hooked — rather than at the beginning. Shoot for 200 to 400 words, which is the sweet spot for blog-post length, and don’t forget to augment your content with video whenever possible.

Video is important, and something that small businesses need to invest some time and energy in learning, because (sooner rather than later) video is going to be essential to your success. I am still experimenting with video, especially in my book review posts, and I have found these types of posts to be much more popular and successful.

Videos are fantastic tools for teaching, and for exposing the “wow” factor of your product or service. It is one thing to tell people about what you do, it is another to be able to show them and let them show other people.

Let me start with this: I met these gentlemen in May of 2008 at SOBCon and they are two of the most knowledgeable and sincere people that I have encountered. I really didn’t know who they were or what they did, but I have sure learned a lot from them since then.

In fact, I have spent about 3 years learning about what is in this book:

You need to go to Amazon and order this book right now. It’s okay, I’ll wait.

This book is a complete course in how to do business online in today’s world. There is quite a bit of buzz about this book, it is a NY Times best-seller after all. But that is not why I want you to go out and buy it, or why I gush a little about how cool Chris and Julien are. No, the reason is that you can save yourself a lot of time and effort learning the things that I learned the hard way – reading lots and lots of blog posts and e-books and whatever else I could get my hands on.

Trust Agents – Find out what Social Media is really all about

Chris and Julien have put together a reference book and instruction manual for gaining the background and skills that you need to bring your business into the world of Web 2.0 and beyond. To quote from the introduction:

“Trust Agents is the answer to the question,”What do I do now?” It is full of actionable information, supported by research and strategies, studies, and an explanation of the thought process behind what we do on the web. We love all the great “idea” books out there, and we do have lots of ideas packed in here as starting points. In addition to these, we give you actionable tasks that you can execute.”

Ideas and actionable tasks for business

The book starts off with a couple of stories about building trust, social capital, and the state of media today (and this will probably be the only business book you read this year that has stories about mobsters and student loans). Basic Social Media Literacy, followed by an in-depth explanation of what they call the six principles of trust agents.

Now, since this is a review and not a summary, I am just going to tell you about one of these principles:

The Archimedes Effect

This is my favorite, primarily because it is about leverage, a word that lots of marketing people hate to use. Which is too bad, because – even though it may be badly overused, it is the best word to describe the effect.

“Everyone uses leverage every day: Business owners hire employees so that their business can do more; people use technology such as cars to help them get to work faster; companies have systems that allow them to be more efficient. Yet millions use the Web every day and ignore how best to use the tools at their disposal to bring the greatest benefit.”

This chapter has page after page of examples on using leverage to increase the power of your online (and offline) efforts:

• Build on one success to fuel another
• Arbitrage and Pay Per Click advertising
• Applying these principles for online gaming and business
• Building your network and strengthening relationships
• Create your own niche
• Using your time effectively – delegate
• Get creative with your business marketing, be bold
• Protect your community

If you can’t find something in this chapter to apply to your business, well, it’s likely that one of your competitors will. Guess what happens then?

Buy Trust Agents at Amazon, now.

On 28 July 2009 a company named Horizon Realty made some big news on Twitter, namely that they were suing a former tenant of one of their apartment buildings for an allegedly libelous tweet. I first noticed this news via one of the people that I follow on Twitter who pointed to a post about it at Mashable: Woman Sued for Tweet:

The Tweet, posted under the now defunct user name @abonnen, was the impetus for the libel lawsuit filed at Cook County Circuit Court, seeking $50,000 in damages. And although the Tweet and username are now deleted, accessing the account via Google ()’s cache shows it has around 20 followers. While the numbers could have dropped since deletion, it doesn’t appear the message would have travelled far. @abonnen wasn’t a particularly heavy Twitter () user, either – she posted somewhere between 1 and 5 tweets per day and often didn’t post for 2 or 3 days.

After this, things started to get out of hand. The massive crowd of early-adopters on Twitter, as always tuned in to anything Twitter-related started to spread the word (of course Mashable has over 1 million followers and nearly 300k blog subscribers…) and by mid-day “Horizon Realty” was a trending topic on Search.Twitter.com.

And other bloggers started talking about it too. In fact, my friend Sonia Simone, writing at Copyblogger has an interesting comment about it:

It’s not about what you think is fair

Horizon Realty might be the most loveable, fair, decent and true company in the world. Right now, their name recognition has about as much appeal as Saddam Hussein. With mold.

Whether fair or not, Horizon has made a worldwide name for itself virtually instantly, connecting its brand with callous disregard for its tenants, or worse.

(Yes, there is such a thing as bad publicity. This is what it looks like.)

Do social media users read all the facts carefully before flaming? Of course they don’t. Are there dozens of inaccurate accusations about Horizon flying around Twitter at the moment?

Absolutely.

Is that fair? No. Then again, filing a $50,000 lawsuit against a customer for a snarky remark made to a friend isn’t going to strike many as entirely reasonable either.

I have written about Responding to Negativity before, “You should definitely respond to negative posts. In fact, you simply must respond quickly and carefully. Say you’re sorry, offer to fix the problem, and provide contact information. ”

Of course, Horizon Realty has a bunch of lawyers and such hanging around, waiting to jump on people that get in their way (that’s how things work in Chicago), they even said “We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization.” Now that is acting stupidly.

How Should Horizon Have Handled This

They could certainly still sue the tweeter, but could have avoided a massive amount of negative press, by simply getting out in front of the issue. Instead of waiting until it was too late to issue a press release like this one, they could have (and should have) exercised a little more intelligence in dealing with the client in the first place. The client filed a suit of her own last month, which Horizon Realty believes is without merit, so I suppose this is a way of “getting back” at the former tenant.

If Horizon Realty felt that it was too late for any customer service opportunities because the tenant had moved out and filed her own suit against Horizon, perhaps a reply to the tweet, and a polite letter asking her to delete it, would have been a better way to start the process. Remember, the word-of-mouth potential here is enormous.

People who have a bad experience tend to tell more people about it than people who have a good experience. Add in an element of schadenfreude on the part of people who like to share stories like this and BAM, millions of people hear about your customer service fail.

I am not a lawyer, but it also seems to me that if you are going to file a lawsuit re: libel, perhaps you should include a little more background and information in the filing. You can read the original PDF here. They included a “definition” of Twitter and a couple of paragraphs lauding their own good standing, but nothing to affirm their claim that the “statements in the Tweet concerning plaintiff were and are wholly false“.

Seriously.

How about if point 10 had been:

10.          The defendant’s apartment was inspected on such-and-such date, 2009 by So-and-So Environmental Company of Riverwoods, IL and the apartment was found to be free of mold. A copy of the report is attached to this filing.

Of course that might have been too obvious. And I suspect that there is still more to this case than we know about. Stay tuned, we will find out if there really was any mold there…

…that is, Chris interviews me about business, productivity, and the new SEO product – Writing for the Web.

In this 30 minute interview Stephen tells us:

• How he grew his consulting and coaching business after being made redundant
• His system for being productive
• The simple and basic SEO tweaks that any non-technical website owner can do to get more Google traffic

I am very honored to have had the chance to meet Chris in person at the past two SOBCon conferences, and he is an amazing person. I learned a lot from him as I have built my new business, and if you do not read his blog, you should – ChrisG.com

Thanks again, Chris, for the opportunity!

Chris Garrett has put together a 7-day mini course on business blogging, which you can learn more about here at Simple Web:

Of course the site talks about “content sites” but we know blogs and content sites are the same thing, right? There are a couple more things you need to know

1. Even if you do not run a for-profit site, all the same ideas are relevant

2. The site is about Joomla rather than WordPress, but ALL the principles in this course apply to any blog

3. You will need to add your email address to get all the parts in the series

Get the first part and sign up for all the entries here.

I have been taking the course over the past week or so, and here are some of the things that I have learned:

Day 1 – Planning Your Site

When many people think of creating a website for their business, organization or self, the first idea that comes to mind is the standard “corporate” style site consisting of basic “about” information, followed by a contact form.

Truth is those kinds of site have limited value. The proof is, of course, in your own online behavior. What kind of site do you visit most often? I bet you find content sites more useful and therefore visit them far more often.

We like to keep abreast of news, read tutorials and how-to guides, be informed and entertained.

This is the truth, and something that I evangelize to my clients. The important parts of the first lesson are:

• State your goal
• Define success and how to measure it
• Choose your niche and your audience
• Create the persona for your site
• Make an offer for valuable free content

Day 2 – Researching Your Niche

Focusing on your audience will mean you are always providing what people want and need, in a way that they find compelling. It’s so much easier to promote something that people actually want rather than create something then try to find a market for it!

• Challenges – If you can empathize with what your audience is struggling with then you can become their knight in shining armor!
• Purchases – What are your audience buying and why?
• Education Needs – Are there phases that your audience go through from newbie to black belt? Do they prefer text, video or a mix?
• FAQs – Which questions come up over and over?

Already you will be generating content ideas. Some ideas will be useful as articles, some ebooks, others for glossary and other reference type material. Next we need to find the exact phrases people use to describe issues, and how many people are looking for those phrases …

This is important information, as knowing your audience is vital to the success of your effort!

Day 3 – Setting Up Your Site

Features

Once site owners realize how easy it is to add features to their site they tend to get carried away. Remember your visitor is there to find useful content, not get distracted by gizmos!

The important features you might consider are:

• Contact Form – So the reader can contact you rather than copy and paste your email, also will prevent you getting as much spam.
• Comments/Community – Build a sense of community by sparking discussions
• Search – Allow your reader to find content by searching rather than click-click-click browsing.
• Ecommerce? – Do you want to sell products?
• Email Subscriptions – Keep your visitors coming back over and over by allowing them to sign up to an email service where you can notify them of any new articles or news you post up.

This too is good.

Day 4 – Managing Your Content

Writing Great Content

Here are some tips for making sure your articles have impact:

• Have a point – The most important tip of all is to make sure everything you write has a point, and gets to it. Nothing will put off a reader more than if your articles do not put forward a clear idea, piece of advice, item of news or some other benefit. Start with what you want the reader to take away and make sure your content builds up to just that.
• Think ‘So What?’ – The litmus test for if you have achieved the above “point” tip is to ask yourself if the reader will be thinking “So What”. This goes for your headlines and links too. People can agree, disagree, be motivated to take action or sent to sleep, but make sure they never ask “so what”.
• Don’t force it – Readers can tell if you are forcing out content. If it is not flowing, do something else for a while rather than try to force yourself to write.
• Write like a person – Your High School English teacher is not reading, so it is safe to write as you speak. People connect more with people who write like they are speaking directly to them rather than dry, academic style formal writing.
• Draft, then edit – Don’t edit as you write, it stunts your creativity. As much as possible get into the flow then come back to polish later.
• Read your content back – A great way to know if your writing is going to work is if you read it back, aloud. If you find yourself running out of breath trying to get to the end of your paragraphs you know you need to tweak!

You will notice I have not written about great headlines and being persuasive. While those things are important and can help you create more traffic and sales, it is also important at this stage of the game for you not to feel intimidated. Don’t set the bar too high for yourself, just write and enjoy writing. Providing you offer something, create some sort of value, and it is readable enough to make sense, then people will be happy to read.

More good advice, in fact hundreds of posts have been written about these basic ideas. I highly recommend this course for people just getting started on blogging and social media. Get the first part and sign up for all the entries here.

Digital Marketing: Using Social Media to Listen to Consumers – Advertising Age – Digital

The internet has made it easier than ever for consumers to get their opinions heard — and for marketers to listen. But it also creates real challenges: Do marketers know who they’re listening to? And at what point does the echo chamber of social media drown out the real opinions of the people who buy your brand?

“The data is a really compelling reminder that a lot of our target consumers are not the people who are sitting on Twitter freaking out over a packaging design that they don’t like,” said Diane Hessan, CEO of Communispace. She added, “These are people online, having conversations, and yet they are totally out of the loop on stuff us marketing junkies love to obsess over.”

Out of the loop

For example, in the past month, the Twitter community has been titillated by South by Southwest, AT&T, “Lost” and the redesign of Skittles.com. Missing from the list are things the Communispace and Lightspeed surveys, both separately commissioned on Ad Age’s behalf, found that the general population is fired up about, such as the AIG bonuses and the bank-bailout plans.

How to listen and respond more effectively

KNOW YOUR CONSUMERS’ SOCIAL-MEDIA HABITS. “What you see is not necessarily representative of people using the social technologies, but the people using those social technologies and like to talk,” said Forrester’s Josh Bernoff.

HAVE A RESPONSE MECHANISM IN PLACE. Don’t wait until you have vocal critics to design a response plan. Rather than pulling its ad and issuing an apology on its site that confused the 90% of people who weren’t aware of the criticism, Motrin could have engaged the angry mob.

LOOK FOR CHANGES IN CHATTER. If suddenly the conversation doubles, or if people start talking about your brand in a way they weren’t the day before, something important is happening. “Changes in attitudes are more significant about attitudes themselves,” Mr. Bernoff said.

PINPOINT PASSION. Your critics can provide you with insight into a base you didn’t know existed. Who, for example, were these “attachment parenting” moms so outraged by Motrin? Not all criticism is cause for action, but it is cause to dig deeper.

I have a post up at the SOBCon Blog with a fun exercise for you to do:

Can you come up with illustrative ways to describe it’s value without resorting to the lingo and buzzwords we’ve already beat to death?

One of the powerful elements of social media has been that it strips away many of the artificial trappings that have weighed down marketing and communications for decades.

We got mired in our lingo quicksand in that traditional, push communications world. We got lost talking about brand attributes and key messages and talking points and brand promises and all those terms, and we forgot what they meant. We lived and died by our contrived, scripted fallbacks, and often propped up buzzwords in place of real strategy and action. [Emphasis mine, Ed.]

Read more –>